


Honeyed Blood

by maureeeen



Category: The Witcher (TV), Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: M/M, Unrequited Love, jaskier beats him up, physically and verbally, the girls are fighting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-18
Updated: 2020-03-20
Packaged: 2021-02-28 19:55:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,403
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23202832
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maureeeen/pseuds/maureeeen
Summary: When Geralt, guilt-ridden, finally finds Jaskier a week after their fight on the mountain, his bard is drenched in booze and furious.
Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia & Jaskier | Dandelion, Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion
Comments: 20
Kudos: 187
Collections: Witcher





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> For parts of this to make sense I should explain that the ballads Jaskier writes about Geralt and their adventures are widely read as ones of admiration and unrequited love.

“There’s your poet.” It shouldn’t be possible to say that word with such disdain, but, as Geralt was quickly finding out, anything was possible in Oerat. This was, after all, a town where a man that should have been cut off days ago could be sold alcohol until he passed out multiple nights in a row. He opened his arms as the jailer Jaskier had been leaning against all but threw him at him. Jaskier made a pitiful noise in his throat as their bodies collided that Geralt would likely not have been able to hear if it weren’t for his witcher hearing, and he was glad for it. Dignity was important to Jaskier and this scene lacked it enough as it was. It still echoed in his ears as if it'd been a scream.  
"Obscene idiot," the jailer grumbled as he turned his back on them to return into the building. He was lucky Geralt had his hands full.

Jaskier was barely able to keep his eyes open, nevermind focussed. Geralt wasn't sure he knew what was happening, or who'd come to collect him. The Gods only knew what he’d been getting himself into. Geralt hated it.  
Jaskier stank of sweat and alcohol and the witcher shielded the half of his face that wasn’t smushed into his chest from the glances of onlookers who had nothing better to do, it seemed, than to stand in front of the jail and stare. Sometimes, the bard’s popularity was a pain in the ass. Well. Geralt supposed he'd made quite a name for himself during his stay as well, even to people who might not have known him previously.  
“I’ll have to carry you,” he informed his friend, quietly, and counted to three before he hoisted him up into the air. He’d placed one arm under his knees, the other around his shoulders, so that he may hide his face against his chest. Jaskier did not react to it other than with a small groan. His body was entirely limp. It urged Geralt’s step to hasten.

He carried Jaskier to the little cart he'd rented and fastened to Roaches saddle, and placed him there gently amongst hay and Jaskier's pack, which had been easy to locate. Once he’d found the correct town, the first shopkeep he’d asked had been able to tell him where the famous Dandelion had been spending his nights. It hadn't taken much convincing to get the innkeeper to hand it over either, he'd seemed relieved to have the bard off his hands. "Oh, are you the white wolve, then? With teeth of ivory and a daggerlike tongue?"  
"Oh, Christ."  
"Quite right. No one even paid him anymore and he still wouldn't stop wailin'. I must admit, I'd expected more of Dandelion, the great troubadour."  
Geralt grimaced. "Usually he's better"  
"Well, that's a good thing, then, he'll make money elsewhere and pay you back the debt he's put himself in with you. 30 orens. Three nights he's been too drunk now to throw out into the street," the keeper said, and held out his open palm, a little shaky. There was fear in his eyes and a sulky look on his face, but still, he demanded what was his. Geralt nodded. “Those you’ll get.”  
His stance relaxed.  
Geralt rummaged through his pockets in search for his wallet, dreading what he’d find at the jail.  
He gave the keeper 40 and a firm, sincere thank you. "It takes a very kind man not to throw another out after three days without payment."  
"Ah," said the man, waving it off, but smiled nonetheless, showing his rotting teeth. Geralt quickly looked away, hoping he hadn’t seen him notice. "Don't go telling anybody."  
Geralt felt himself smile. "I promise I won't. I'll only spread word of good service and great beer. And the next time I'm in town, I'll bring my business, too."  
"Aye. Not your bard, though."  
They both smiled.  
"I'll remember not to. Take care."  
"You too, witcher," he said and coughed up a laugh. 

Geralt, approaching his horse, felt like Jaskier’s pack had gotten heavier - it wasn’t unlike the bard to weep his sorrows into new clothes, so this wasn’t a surprise as much as another indicator towards a poor state of mind. Guilt bit at his stomach.

It took them about three hours to get back to the inn Geralt was staying at, a few towns over. For once he was glad for the ride.  
The sun gently nestled into the woods surrounding the fields, golden and beautiful. He allowed himself to relax into it, now that Jaskier was safe. He couldn't imagine he was too comfortable in his cart, even with the padding Geralt had left him, but he didn't seem to mind. Geralt was prepared to let him ride with him, should he start to complain, but every time he turned his head to check on him, he found him fast asleep.

Geralt had hoped Jaskier might be able to carry himself into the inn, not because Geralt minded, he didn’t seem to have put much food into his body, he was quite light - but he would have liked to spare him the humiliation of this sort of arrival to a tavern full of people. No such luck. As he shifted his weight in his arms, trying to get a good grip on him, he thought he wouldn’t even be able to wear his new clothes, once he’d put the weight back on, they’d all be too tight. What a shame.

He placed him on the only bed in the room, making sure to turn him onto his side with one leg up over the other and his hand under his face in case he might vomit while Geralt made a second run for their belongings. He also handed Roach and the cart off to the stablehand and kissed her goodnight. The young boy didn’t seem to judge him at all, gave him a smile and a wordless curtsy, and Geralt handed him two orens that had still been in his pocket. 

He had Jaskier’s head in his lap shortly thereafter, trying to get him to drink water in which he’d diluted a potion that would have been too strong to just dribble into his mouth straight from the vial, although that would have been easier than trying to get a half unconscious man to drink from a cup. The potion was to rid him of toxins and most importantly, the pain he'd otherwise suffer, should he manage to sober up.  
Unfortunately, the only thing the entire maneuver seemed to do was agitate him.  
When Jaskier finally managed to focus his eyes, they immediately narrowed in disdain. He spat the water at Geralt’s face in what would have been a concentrated stream had he been able to tense the muscles in his mouth properly, but ended up as more of a bubble that Geralt quickly kept him from choking on by turning him onto his side. He patted at his back so he might cough anything that had went down his windpipe out onto the wooden floor, his face hanging over his knees. "Fuck you," he choked.  
Quite right.  
"Fucking asshole."  
"I know. I’m s-"  
"Take me for granted for years, treat me like shit."  
Jaskier punctuated his sentence with a kick against the bed frame and Geralt cringed watching his socked toes curl up in pain. Even more enraged, he turned back around against the hand on his back, so that he could spit at Geralt again. He hit this time. The witcher startled, jerking his face to the side and blinked a few times. He could still smell the spirits in his saliva. He wiped it from his face and then his hand against his trousers, looking back down at Jaskier, who was staring at him with immeasurable disgust, lips moving silently, no doubt practicing a devastating verbal blow. With his hands limbly on his chest, he looked like an angry rodent. If he was lucky, Geralt thought, this would be funny in a few weeks.  
"I'm sorry, Jaskier."  
"Yeah, well, it's too late."  
Geralt nodded. “I under-”  
"A day after, I expected you, at the latest!"  
Geralt nodded. "I've been trying to find you all week."  
"Yeah, well, fuck you. You did a shit job. If you gave two fucks about it, you would have found me quicker. You get paid for tracking things."  
"Things, Jaskier. You were hiding. Specifically from me. Not from anything and everything, as monsters do. It was difficult."  
"No, it fucking wasn’t. And don't patronize me."  
Tears were glimmering in his cornflower blue eyes, he looked ready to pounce should Geralt make one wrong move, so he said nothing. There wasn’t a point.  
"I love you. Do you understand that? Do you know what that means?"  
Geralt tilted his head to the side and considered his contorted face. "Yes, I do, Jaskier."  
Quite intimately, he did.  
"Yeah, well I doubt it. You wouldn't treat someone who loves you the way you treat me if you did."  
Geralt did not sigh or otherwise protest. It was good for them both that he was getting it out.  
"Can’t argue that, can you!" Jaskier hit him in the chest then with all the strength of a sleep deprived man who’d spent a whole week drunk, but also all the anger of a bard that didn’t care that he was ruining his vocal chords with booze and shouting and improper singing.  
It did throw Geralt back a bit.  
"I don't know what. I'm sorry. I took my anger out on you and I shouldn’t have."  
"That's it, then, yeah?" Jaskier scrambled to get up and Geralt let him. His legs went weak and he stumbled to the floor, luckily he’d not managed to right himself all the way up or the fall might’ve hurt. "The reason you yelled all your cruelty at me was you were angry? You admit I did nothing wrong?"  
Geralt sighed.  
"That’s great!”  
Jaskier looked as red as the floral details on his stained beige shirt. His eyes were watery and bloodshot, there were multiple wounds on the visible parts of his chest and his arms, his hair was greasy and knotted. Geralt ached to take care of him. Make it better.  
"I wanted -" he swallowed. "To b - to gain back my strength, I was humiliated. The only power I had on the mountain was the one I have over you, and I hated that you witn-"  
Jaskier roared at that, furious, guttural, his hands in fists by his side. Someone in the room below them hit the ceiling a few times.  
"I hate you! I hate you, fuck you for finding me like this, for looking at me like this, for taking me and my shit when I couldn’t defend myself against it, for carrying me here, for making me drink whatever the fuck that is while I was unconscious, fuck you!"  
Geralt nodded.  
The banging resumed, and there was yelling, now, too.  
"We're sorry!" Geralt shouted back.  
"No we're not!"  
"You will be in a second!" Screamed a woman, high pitched. "My daughters got a fever! Go outside if you want to yell at each other!"  
"She's right!" A man screamed from somewhere to their right.  
Well, she was.  
Jaskier was roaring again already, pushing himself off the ground. "Fine!"

Geralt went after him as he tumbled down the stairs, and didn’t steady him by the arms as he wished to. The innkeeper gave them a dirty look, and a few others in the tavern did, too, but more of them looked curious, whispering.  
"Would you please prepare a bath?" Geralt whispered to the innkeeper, who eyed him with his jaws clenched. He fished at his pockets and remembered, his face growing even hotter than it’d been, that he’d left the last of his spare coin with the stablehand, and his wallet was upstairs.  
“I’ll pay you-”  
“Yeah, yeah,” said the innkeeper. “Go after your friend before he breaks all my glasses and you have to pay for them, too.” 

Jaskier was progressing toward the door by holding onto every table in his way so he wouldn’t fall. Geralt caught up with him quite easily.

Outside, he gave up on keeping himself upright and all but rolled around in the dirt, yelling.  
“It already took so bloody fucking long, getting you to give a rats ass about me, and then to show it, too, God, it took forever - I’m not immortal like you, Geralt, you’ve stolen five years of my life from me, five fucking years that I’ll never get back, where I was supposed to be happy and dancing and fucking my brains out and all I did all that time was think of you and make up ways to make you love me, I hate you, I hate you!”  
Geralt felt bad standing over him, so he sat down on the ground, which only seemed to make Jaskier more furious.  
“I should have fallen for somebody else, somebody my own fucking age, somebody pretty and easier to love - and no one’s easy, no one’s untouched by grief and fear and anger and the aftershock of violence stuck in our bones,” this was the part he’d practiced, Geralt thought. He couldn’t deny its’ effect. “No, we’re all like that, but not all of us choose to wallow in it ‘til the day we fucking ‘slow and die’,” he imitated, hands shooting up to his head, and spat at the ground after he retched a few times.  
Geralt stared, wide eyed and slack-jawed.  
“No, you have to carry it around you like armor, like an honor that’s been bestowed upon - beaten into you!” Geralt felt bile rise in his throat. A mix of anger and helpless terror spread in his chest. “Oh, and you need everybody to know, too, so they know how greatly you suffered and how tall you stand despite it” Geralt tried to hold onto the knowledge that Jaskier shouldn’t be taken seriously in this state. “And what do I do, despite it happening to me?” He was shouting at the top of his lungs, gesticulating wildly. “I love and I laugh and I sing!” He roared. Geralt couldn’t help the joyless laugh that escaped him.  
Jaskier’s entire body was coated in dust, he was sitting on his calves, his hands in fists by his hips, eyes wide with hatred and provocation. Geralt could feel all the looks of the people in the inn, crowded by the windows. What a show he was giving them. His screaming rang on for a while.  
“You beg,” Geralt said, trembling “on every street corner to be loved, ignore anybody forthcoming and leech onto someone who’s incapable of it. You-”  
He screamed again, from the depths of his soul, Geralt thought. He waited for it to stop, and then continued. “You impale yourself on me so you can run around, moaning in pain, covered in your own honeyed blood and get paid for it, you, you delight in the heartache you inflict upon yourself, and in the pity of little girls not an inch more mature than you who mistake your - your - your lying for art, I could have been anybody!” Geralt yelled. “Anybody with a hardened heart and you would have sunken your delicate fingers into me and not let go!”  
It was Jaskier’s turn to stare this time, his mouth open.  
“You want to suffer. You want to waste your precious youth, because you think it pretty and poetic and you love pain, I know that and so does everyone you’ve let into your chambers.” Jaskier looked like he’d been struck then, and Geralt paused and realized what he was doing. His voice was softer when he continued, although it still shook. “And I did try. I tried my bloody fucking best and one time I was cruel, because you wouldn’t -”  
“One time?” Jaskier yelled, pushing himself up onto his knees. “Like you haven’t shoved me and insulted me and hit me and made me sleep on the floor for -”  
“That was in the beginning! Haven’t I apologized for that enough!”  
“No!” Jaskier, once again roared, long and loud and so raspy it hurt in Geralt’s own throat just to hear it.  
“Leave, then, if I’m so fucking awful!”  
“Be careful what the fuck you wish for, you piece of shit!” He spat at him again and crawled back up onto his feet, kicking dust and stones and pebbles into his face. Geralt turned to his side so he could get up, there wasn’t any doubt in his mind that if given the chance, he’d take both his eyes out with his knees. Jaskier’s fists hit him as he did, in the face, in the stomach, in the throat and the ears, anywhere soft that could hurt, and he kicked, too, his shins, stamped onto his feet, kneed him in the nuts.  
“Fuck -”  
“Aha!” He called, triumphant.  
Geralt convulsed in on himself, he hadn’t thought it was necessary to defend himself actively, but Jaskier had apparently had enough of the potion to regain some of his strength. He reached out, blindly, for his wrists, they kept flying at him so it didn’t take long, and when he finally caught them, all he had to do was stay away from Jaskier’s feet and knees, and that was a little easier, because his arms reached further than Jaskier’s did and he could hold him at a distance. All he could do then was spit.  
“Have you turned into a fucking llama!”  
“Yeah, are you enjoying it?”  
Geralt laughed, helpless and tired, and Jaskier finally weakened. He kicked up only more dust and tried to pull his wrists out of Geralt’s hands. The witcher let go quickly, not wanting to enrage him again as he’d apparently just started to calm down. 

Eventually, panting, he stared into his eyes. “I’ll have that bath. And don’t you fucking dare come near me.”

Geralt saw his ears redden, no doubt as he spotted the many faces by the windows.


	2. Chapter 2

Geralt sat down on the floor before the door. What point was there in sitting in the tavern amongst all the people he’d just been humiliated in front of? It was comfortably dark, here, and at least the noise was somewhat dulled. With the world spinning, exhaustion in his bones and regret as well as the very real fear of abandonment nipping at his heart, he had nothing else to do but to try and let the sensations pass through him. At least there was relief as well, now that the bard was safe. 

The people in the tavern were going back to their various conversations. He heard laughter, negotiations as well as heated discussion. He smelled food and drink and fire. Wood and leather, sweat and infection, vomit and piss. At the other side of the door, he smelled the contents of many of his vials being added to bathwater - thankfully only ones he knew Jaskier to be familiar with. One to relax his muscles, one to soothe his wounds, one to calm his nerves. He heard soft splashing accompanied by sighs and moaning and felt his shoulders drop. The water, he assumed, felt good. 

He heard him hum, too, and sniffel after a while. More splashing and then the wet, dull sounds of his feet against the floors. Finally he heard him open the windows, as he did, Geralt knew, so that he could watch the stars as he drifted off. He heard him throw himself into bed and then fail to find comfort. 

Cold night air was crawling through the gap underneath the door.

Geralt thought himself lucky to have gotten a room on the third floor, for the bard, despite all his anger, wouldn’t attempt to climb out of that particular window in the morning, and, God forbid, run off with his horse. Roach knew him well enough that she might come along, he thought, deliriously tired, drawing his knees close to his chest, and she’d heard all the fights, sure she thought that he deserved anything Jaskier might hurl at him. Abandonment perhaps most of all. 

The tossing and turning wasn’t stopping. He hoped Jaskier wouldn’t find the dwarven liquor that he carried in his bag.

The sound of careful steps approaching pulled him out of his thoughts. When he looked up, he saw the stablehand from earlier, with his halo of golden curls and his tired eyes, holding a wooden bowl in both hands. 

“Someone sends up soup for you,” he smiled. 

Geralt laughed, weakly, more of an exhale, really, and reached out for it. “Thank you,” he said. The boy plopped down next to him. 

“Said I should keep you company too, if you permit it,” he said, obviously repeating someone else’s words. Geralt guessed he might be about 8. “Do you permit it?”

“I do. What’s your name?” He asked, trying to balance the bowl on his belly so that he may eat without having to hold onto it.

“Emil,” the stablehand said, and wiped his hands on his shirt. The soup was hot, the bowl must have made his palms sweat. 

“Nice to meet you, Emil.”

“Likewise,” Emil said, and did not ask his name. “Sh- they” Geralt felt the corner of his mouth quirk up, “also said that you shouldn’t have fought back,” he said, smiling a little smug.

“She was right,” he said. “I regret it horribly,” he raised his voice.

He heard a kick in the room, and a scream, after: “Should have thought of that beforehand! Bitten your fucking tongue for once!”

Three people, then, banged on their ceilings, and Geralt nodded, and went back to his soup. 

Emil tried to stifle laughter. 

“He’s right, you know?”

The child nodded. 

“It’s just that I spent a whole week looking for him, sick with worry, barely got any sleep, spent all my money in different inn’s and trying to bribe vagabonds - not unlike himself, actually, just much less talented and pretty -” Emil laughed, again. “Worse smelling, too. If you can manage, catch a whiff of him, he wears nice perfumes.”

“Is he your boyfriend?”

“Something like that,” Geralt said, between a spoonful of potato-mushroom soup. “I didn’t know he felt that way about me, actually. Not - not to this extend, anyway. ‘til just now. Nice way to find out, isn’t it? Now that it’s all gone to shit.”

He chewed some bigger, gummy pieces of mushroom. Emil sulked at him, still trying not to laugh. It was quite becoming, actually, the soup, and the cheerful company. Perhaps it wasn't appropriate, saying these things to a child. But he didn't have anyone else to say them to, and they wanted out.

“Hadn’t dreamed that someone beautiful and talented as that,” he said, his forehead leaning against the wooden door, making Emil snort. “would ever fall in love with me that deeply. Was always ready-” he shoved another spoonful of soup into his mouth “to discover him gone, at any point.” Tears were welling up in his eyes and he blinked them away, and quickly continued. “When he’d gotten enough material out of whatever this was to him.” He pulled up the snot trying to trickle out of his nose. "For his music."

“Might have kept me a tad detached,” he said. "That."

He swallowed.

“Well, here we are.”

The boys’ light hand landed on his shoulder.

“You’re in love with him too, then?”

“Horribly. My hands and my arms go weak every time I think of it.”

“Right now, too?”

“Yes, right now too.”

Geralt finished his soup, and Emil collected the empty bowl from him, but he didn’t seem to want to move from his spot. He was leaning against his arm quite comfortably. 

“Go on.”

“I don’t want to go to bed.”

“Why not?”

“Because I have to bathe, first, mother says. And brush my teeth. And I’m so tired, I want to sleep here with you.”

Geralt felt himself brighten at the normality of it. “It’ll get cold,” he said. “And your backside will start hurting. And then, when you decide later that you do want your bed, it’ll be even worse to make yourself get up.”

About half an hour after the boy had descended down the stairs, throwing him a sulking look, the door behind Geralt opened. He’d hoped for this to happen around midday tomorrow, when the hunger would have forced him out. Not now, not by any chance. 

Jaskier looked at him with a very serious, still face. 

“Come on,” he said, quiet. 

Jaskier crossed the room, still staggering, so that he could sit on the chair by the desk, and stared at him, miserable. 

“What will we do?”

Geralt carefully closed the door behind himself. 

His legs hurt, and his ass, from sitting on the ground, and he could tell he’d already bruised in a few places. 

“I beat you up pretty good, huh?”

Geralt swallowed the knot in his throat. “What do you want to do?” 

Jaskier’s hands found his face, covering it forehead to chin, his hair falling over his fingertips. It was getting long. “I just want things to be normal,” he said. “Do you think they can be?”

“People fight,” Geralt said after a while. 

They were quiet for some time. Geralt was sure Jaskier wasn’t happy with that answer, but he didn’t have a different one. In his head he must be calling him evasive. 

“Did you really mean what you said?” 

Geralt thought about it. “In part,” he said. “But I’d always found it endearing. It doesn’t bother me, that you’re like that.” Jaskier pulled his legs up so that he could shield his face with his knees, as well. “Just - don’t like to be blamed for it, is all.”

Jaskier pressed his hands into his face and moaned, deep in his throat, and Geralt’s stomach dropped, thinking he’d made him mad again. He was too tired for another round. 

“Maybe we’re a poor mix,” Jaskier finally told his palms. 

Geralt exhaled. 

“Maybe.” his voice was thick with regret.

“Did  _ you _ mean it?”

“I did - I th- I think. Geralt, I haven’t been sober in a week. I don’t know what I mean and what I don’t.”

Geralt sat down on the bed, kicking off his shoes. 

“Felt good, though.”

Geralt was quiet. 

“I feel better. Empty.”

Geralt nodded.

“Although I am starting to wonder if I maybe...” Jaskier trailed off. “What will we do?” He repeated, rubbing at his face. 

Geralt stared at the poet, his soft, now-clean hair, his new buttercup yellow nightdress. Purple detailing, it had. It was pretty. It would, Geralt thought, reach down to his thighs, but right now it was bunched up at the hip. He was wearing grey underpants.

He was so obviously exhausted beyond reason. Geralt ached to touch the space between his shoulder blades. A knee. He stayed seated on the bed, stared instead. 

“Go to sleep?” He asked, when Jaskier was quiet. 

“I can’t, until we fix this.”

“There’s no fixing it now,” Geralt said gently. “If you could see yourself…”

The next morning, Geralt awoke to Jaskier staring at him, his back leaning against the wall behind the bed, biting his nails. He barely stirred when Geralt returned his gaze. “I think,” he cleared his throat, but as he continued, his voice still wasn’t much more than a hoarse whisper. “I think that maybe got away from me, a bit. Last night.”

Geralt couldn’t help his mouth quirk into a smile. “Do you?”

The corners of Jaskier’s eyes seemed to brighten at that. 

Geralt let himself roll onto his back. “Must’ve been holding onto all that a while.”

Jaskier nodded. “Talked about it too much, too. With too many friends. Made too much poetry out of it.”

Geralt nodded. 

“I’m very, very sorry. I didn’t - I didn’t mean it. I just wa- picked up whatever I could throw.”

Geralt looked at him, pushing his bottom lip up into a sympathetic sulk. “We’re even, then.”

They both knew that wasn’t a good thing.

They looked at each other a while, Jaskier was chewing on his lip. The yellow made him look sick. 

“I don’t even know what to say, about -” he had to look away to finish his sentence. “Hitting you. Sorry doesn’t cover it.”

“It doesn’t,” Geralt agreed. “You underestimate your strength.”

“I don’t.” Jaskier shook his head. There was something in his eyes that made him look like a stranger when he finally willed himself to return Geralt’s gaze again.

“You weren’t completely wrong,” Geralt said. “Not - not to hit me. But - I was cruel to you. Many times. And I regret it horribly.”

He cleared his throat. Jaskier was watching him intently. 

“I was wondering, when all that might come out.” He looked away. “It might be a good thing, I think. That it did.”

“Hm…”

Geralt finally pushed himself up so he could lean against the wall, too. He turned towards Jaskier and lifted a hand before his face. “Follow my finger with your eyes.”

He watched him, making his movements unpredictable, sometimes fast, sometimes slow. He could barely get himself to stop, drawing nonsense signs into the air in front of Jaskier’s face, because he really didn’t fancy moving onto the next part. 

“Seems like you’re mostly sober.” He swallowed.

“I think so.”

“You’ve got money left?”

Geralt saw his eyes well up, but he did nod. 

“Where’s Chestnut?”

“Still in Oerat, unless you took her.”

Geralt shook his head. “Must’ve forgotten about her, that inkeeper.”

They were both grateful for it. “I’ll take you. We can figure it out on the way there. We both need to eat.”

He pushed himself off the mattress, folding the blanket back. The cold in the room gusted along his legs and he heard Jaskier’s breath faintly hitch, probably spotting the bruises. 

Geralt turned back around to him and tilted his head. “Don’t look so sad,” he said, putting a knee onto the bed. “It’s hardly fair.” His mouth was close to his face, and Jaskier blinked a few times, rapidly, and trembled when Geralt pressed a kiss to his cheek. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There will be an epilogue!


	3. Chapter 3

Despite it all, it was calming, Jaskier’s warm weight against his back.

There was nothing in the fields to shield them from the sun bathing them in heat and gold. For a long while, they rode silently. 

Geralt, for one, tried to enjoy it. It felt peaceful. Like stolen time. 

“Maybe,” Jaskier said, sounding tired, like he was forcing himself out of bed on a monday. “We put some distance between all this and us.”

Geralt didn’t have much experience with these kinds of negotiations, but he’d heard that ‘taking a break’ was rarely a good thing. It felt horribly unfair. Now that he knew that Jaskier had been this involved, he’d wanted him that badly this whole time, he was supposed to stay away and suffer his loss? Without getting to bask in it? Even for one full day? Without even trying to let it sink into his bones? It wasn’t like he’d had any time to, until now. And he didn’t trust it, either, with all that had happened.

He huffed. “I don’t - I don’t like it,” he said, honestly. He might have agreed despite that being true, on any other day, and he heard how immature he sounded but, he thought, holding their breath was what had gotten them here. 

“You don’t?” Jaskier seemed to perk up. 

“It sounds reasonable,” Geralt said. “I’ll admit, but I don’t like it. I missed you too much. I was too worried,” he said. “And afraid,” he admitted. “it was all too - too violent, too much of a shock, to leave now. I want to let it be.”

“You do?”

“Mh.”

“I like it,” Jaskier said, pushing his face into Geralt’s back.

His heart sank. It felt like a blow to the chest. “Well,” he cleared his throat. “If you want to, I suppose - I mean, there’s no point in trying to force - not that I even could-”

“No. You saying these things. It’s nice.”

“Oh.”

Jaskier was quiet for a while and Geralt chewed on his lip. 

“Do your arms feel weak?” He asked. 

And they did. “Horribly.”


End file.
